I offered him another—in English, and, as I thought, rather interesting in appearance.
"Pah!" he ejaculated, as if I had put some nauseous thing under his nose, "popular!"
He exploded this last word, which was his most violent term of condemnation, and ran through the rest of the books.
"Well, I'll take this into the reading-room and look it through," and he started with the German book.
I prevailed upon him to take the other as well, and he consented, with a grunt. He did not notice that I had slipped an interest gauge into both of them.
After a bit, I followed him into the reading-room. He was in a far corner, hard at work. Mrs. Cornelia Crumpet was engaged in conversation with Miss Bixby, the reference librarian, when I came in.
"Oh, here's Mr. Edwards!" she exclaimed. "Why, what a library you have! I can't find anything at all about the Flemish Renaissance and I do not know what I shall do, for I have to read a paper on it to-morrow afternoon before the Twenty-Minute Culture Club. Miss Bixby was just saying she would get me something. Now what would you advise? There is nothing at all in the books I looked at."
"Perhaps you looked in the wrong books," I suggested, observing that she had a copy of "Thelma" under her arm.
"Oh, Mr. Edwards, how ridiculous of you! I'm carrying this book home for the housemaid; she's sick in bed, and the cook said she was homesick and threatened to leave. So I said I would get her something to read to occupy her mind. This is fearful trash, I suppose, but I thought it would keep her contented until she got well. But I do wish you would tell me what to consult about the Flemish Renaissance."
"Mrs. Crumpet," I said, "Miss Bixby knows more about that subject in one minute than I do all day, and I advise you to let her prescribe."